Mike Mulder’s American Cave

About the Album

Meeting Chip Westerfield was a random thing. Mulder just picked up the phone book and started calling music people in Bellingham, asking if they knew of either a studio or a producer to contact. Within a few calls, it was highly recommended that he get hold of Chip at Bayside Studio right away.

At our first meeting, Chip listened to a batch of Mulder’s songs that had been recorded cheaply and on a cassette recorder—remember those? He listened intently to the tunes, and after no time at all saying “I think I have a band for you.”

Chip’s brother, Sean Westerfield, was to play drums, Lonnie Knechtel on bass and all of the keyboards, Gary Ballard would come up from Seattle to play all sorts of stringed instruments – electric and acoustic guitars, twelve-string, dobro, steel, and mandolin. Chip would play the electric guitar.

Chip and Mulder had begun what would prove to be a long and fruitful musical relationship. They have kept at it trading production ideas for songs, and even collaborating on some tunes, where Chip would start with an idea for a song and Mulder would go away and compose it.

“Wild World” is a twelve-minute wonder in which Mulder taps into the archetypal images of hope and despair, faith and doubt, paradise lost and paradise found—images and concepts which have played out in his entire adult life.

On American Cave Mulder set out to entertain while offering up the deepest ideas in his life. “Highway to Glory” delves into the uncertainty one feels with advancing age. American Cave itself is Americana and bluesy at its core. The song American Cave lives on: “China may rule/ or maybe India will/ I see African children lined up at the window sill.” The paradox of living in an age in which medical breakthroughs allow humans the chance to live longer, where poverty is being curbed on a global scale, and yet where climate change threatens at the same time to destroy us, is captured in the lyric of the title song. Mulder can still play American Cave at every show, and his fans frequently call it a favorite of theirs.